At least 27 people dead and 109 injured after knife-wielding group attacked Kunming railway station in Yunnan provinceAssociated Press in Beijing, March 1, 2014

A group of knife-wielding men attacked a train station in south-western China on Saturday, leaving at least 27 people dead and another 109 injured, the official Xinhua News Agency said, making it one of the deadliest attacks in China in recent years.

Xinhua did not provide further details [....]

Local television station K6 said that several of the attackers were shot by police and that victims were being transported to local hospitals.

The state-run Yunnan News said that the men were wearing uniforms [....]

Comments

[....] authorities considered it to be "an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack."[....]

In an indication of how seriously authorities viewed the attack, one of China's deadliest in recent years, the country's top police official, Politburo member Meng Jianzhu, was on route to Kunming, the Communist Party-run People's Daily reported.

The violence in Kunming came at a sensitive time as political leaders in Beijing prepared for Wednesday's opening of the annual meeting of the nominal legislature where the government of President Xi Jinping will deliver its first one-year work report.

A Xinhua reporter on the scene in Kunming said several suspects had been "controlled" while police continued their investigation of people at the station. The reporter said firefighters and emergency medical personnel were at the station and rushing injured people to hospitals for treatment.

The authorities said five suspects were shot dead but that their identities had not yet been confirmed, Xinhua reported. [.....]

Yang Haifei, a Yunnan province resident who was being treated at the hospital for wounds to his chest and back, told Xinhua that he was buying a ticket when he saw a group of people, most of them dressed in black, rush into the station and start attacking people.

"I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone," he told Xinhua, adding that people who were slower ended up severely injured. "They just fell on the ground," Yang said.

At the guard pavilion in front of the station, three victims were crying [....]

By police with guns. But go ahead, use your imagination and tell us how many dead had both the attackers and the police had guns? Or even if everybody at the station and the attackers had guns? Or if the attackers had Molotov cocktails? Or if the police ran over the attackers with guns instead of knives with a tank?...Or if everyone had guns and when the police got there, they ran over everyone with the tank or starting shooting at the crowd from a helicopter because they were all shooting at each other?

And of course, there's your old favorite: what if the attackers were suicide bombers and a guy at the station had a gun to help them set themselves off?

Also consider this what if: the attackers are anti-government insurgents (which the government already seems to be suggesting,) fighting to free the people from the yoke of the Chinese state, as they see it. They don't need no stinkin' guns to cause major upheaval, they use terrorism, this time with knives, maybe next time with IED's. One of the most common ways of the present and future when a group wants to fight against a state which will always have more powerful weapons than the insurgent group.

In this case, there is a good possibility, there may not have been as many victims, which occurred because the unarmed and fearful people had to wait, till the police arrived with their guns to control the gang attack.

Good people with guns, might have stopped this attack sooner, saving more lives and the injury to others.

And how does a society make sure that only the good people and not the bad people get access to guns? Because if everybody in China had easy access to guns, and many carried them, surely the attackers would have had access to them, too. (Hint: background checks; licensing, etc.)

(And, furthermore, if that were the case in China and it was also a premeditated attack, and they were not total dumbasses, they would take that into consideration, and attack with something that guns could not easily stop. And to repeat: a nation state will always have more powerful weapons than the insurgent group.)

In a Communist society I suppose they would use a National data base to take away all the guns? Leaving a defenseless society to ward off knife attacks by gangs, with nothing more than another knife, club if you could find one or with their bare hands or wait for the police?

Is it your contention, bad people with knives are too be stopped, by good people with knives, or wait till the police arrive with their guns? Uhh ....In your world, I don't want to play the role of the defenseless victim.

The only thing seeing all your circular arguments on this over and over has made very clear is that you have an irrational passionate belief in the amazing magical power of hand guns and rifles. They are the be all and the end all, they can do anything, and they empower the individual more than anything else could possibly do, against fear, against governments and knife wielders and other gun owners and suicide bombers and anarchy and all varieties of crime, that they insure freedom and democracy and all that is good in the world.

When a simple single grenade could easily prove you wrong.

You also have a magical belief that if there were no restrictions on their ownership, the good gun owners will always win over the bad owners.

Your arguments are really the opposite of the argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." You assign amazing magical power to small guns. When every day, much that happens in the world proves you wrong. It's really not 1776 any longer.

Again I ask, why does every thread have to be about gun control. There are numerous threads that are specifically about gun control. Why isn't that enough for you. I'd prefer if make every thread you comment on into a gun control thread.

Both paragraphs of your comment are ridiculous, I can't decide which is more ridiculous.

I certainly appreciate Oceankat pointing out to anyone reading what I complained to you about on Jolly's thread: that you often bring the gun debate to my international news posts. I think it's important that readers who might continue to read on here at Dag realize how you appear to believe gun ownership can solve a lot of the world's problems, how that's part of your world view. That's really the only reason I sometimes answer you when you do this. To help you dig your own grave as to being taken seriously. Yeah, you're free to do it, and we're free to point out that you do it often and that it often seems pretty irrational.

When you bring up violence; of course I try to offer my opinion and solution

To my international news posts

Great that you inform the readers that the World has violent people.

What kind of responses or replies would be acceptable? "Oh how sad, innocent people were attacked and some were killed” “Wasn’t it sad O-K? “Wasn't it sad all you other commenters who wish to remark”

"Why yes AA, “Oh how sad, innocent people were attacked and some were killed”

“Alrighty then, we all agree” “Oh how sad, innocent people were attacked and some were killed"

Except, not only am I sad; but I don't want this sad situation, to happen to any more innocent people,

to believe gun ownership can solve a lot of the world's problems,

I offer my solution; WHAT IS YOURS AND OTHERS SOLUTION OTHER THAN ”Oh how sad, innocent people were attacked and some were killed”

To help you dig your own grave as to being taken seriously.

Odd isn’t it..... That is my objective too. The victims and future victims don’t want to hear “Oh how sad, innocent people were attacked and some were killed” .....What is your solution AA, so we don’t have to ever hear again “ Oh how sad, innocent people were attacked and some were killed”

News thread = news and analysis, people trying to help each other figure out what's going on.

Blogging = offering and debating solutions or discussing or complaining about others' proposed solutions (often along the lines of "if I was king of the world," mho.)

Ever notice I don't blog much?

I will say that i general, I really don't think highly of people who offer solutions on a situation where they don't really even understand yet what's going on in a developing story. I call that: jumping to conclusions.

Also, I don't fancy myself king of the world, I don't like to think that way, and I really don't ever feel a need to start thinking about solutions until I've read and thought a great deal about a problem. Actually, even if I have read and thought a lot on it, I often like to keep my thoughts about what should be done to myself, along the lines of "knowledge is power, you never know when it will come in handy." And my opining would take more time away from figuring out more about what's going on, more knowledge. I do think the more minds trying to figure out what is going on in a story, the better. Not solutions, but figuring out a story.

Cavaet: I don't run this website, but that's how I approach using it, and will continue to do so unless told by management I've got it wrong. And I will say that I've never seen them say people can't offer solutions on news threads, and I've really don't see any harm in people doing it, but neither am I required to respect anyone I consider to have a habit of "jumping to conclusions."

That is what is wrong with our Society; to many folks in the cheap seats who don't have to get their hands dirty or get criticized;; all the while they criticize others

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

BTW I do appreciate your contributions to provide the news, but who is supposed to do the work, to address the problems you point out?.. Give me the mega phone of the King of the world, so I don't have to be criticized or attacked..... I too might find it comfortable sitting in my comfy chair. While others do the work of trying to solve the problems. "Hey I want to be just the messenger, they don't get shot at as frequently.

I have absolutely zero power here so I don't see how I could even contemplate being a dictator. As you said I can write whatever I want and what I decided to write was that I'd prefer if you didn't turn every thread into a gun control thread. Just expressing my feelings on your comment.

You wanted to criticize my right because you would prefer; rather than defend my right to add to the conversation; that is your prerogative, but please don't try to tell anyone your a defender of Rights. Because I don't believe you.

You're doing an extreme strawman-attack thing here. He didn't try to tell anyone that, he wasn't talking like that nor about freedom of speech, he was talking about news threads on this website. You do this often, and this is why I have accused you in the past of having a persecution complex, it's like you're arguing with some imagined bogeyman who you feel has victimized you, and not the person you were interacting with, and it seems a little crazy.

Actually, I think his best work was on the need for African gays to have guns in order to avoid death penalties and life imprisonment, introduced into a dialectic that was really an analysis of the contribution by American evangelicals to the movement to persecute gays.

I fear there will never be herring that red again (although we may live in hope...)

The commonplace misconstruction of evidence so as to reach the exact contradiction of any rational thought process(as here, where 10 gunmen could certainly have killed far more than a paltry 3 apiece, machetes per contra), is really a second-rate product, and fit only to provide a cassus snivelorum.

Resistance, personal attacks like this are usually removed by admin. Since Jolly answered it before we could catch it we'll let it pass, but be advised that this is considered crossing the line and won't be tolerated.

Mona, that is very kind, and should you ever come upon me while Mike Tyson is preparing to pummel me, feel free to whomp him over the head with a brick...this, however, is not that case, if you take my meaning.

I understand that this probably didn't bother you, but it does cross the line and needs to be addressed whenever it happens. Not everyone would take it as well as you did, nor handle it as well. Thanks.

I think I did stumble across the colmes/crowley connection, but it induced such cognitive dissonance that I think it fried the particular braincells where it reposed...I forgot it til you brought it up and for second I knew it but then sffsstcrrrackristxxxzzzzz. huh? What were we talking about?

Your understanding of the first amendment is as grossly inaccurate as your understanding of the second. Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech. This applies to government censorship not a comment on a private website. It doesn't even apply to censorship on a private website. We all depend on the courtesy and good sense of the moderators at this privately owned site. If they decide to delete comments or ban anyone its not a first amendment issue. The first amendment does not provide anyone with the right to coerce privately owned websites, tv stations, newspapers, or other publications to publish our musings.

I wouldn't defend your or anyone's right to post here anymore than I'd defend Duck Dynasty's right to have a program on TV.

I wasn't questioning the moderators Rights, I was objecting to your bias, trying to influence others to get on your band wagon. You knew I had the minority opinion, so I was an easy target for you to incite the tyranny of the majority

Kissing up to the mangers now, by telling them "you have every right to refuse their kind, (advocates for the Second Amendment) service.

Next you'll be telling me what water fountain or what counter I should sit at; or where I should sit on the bus, because that is what you and others prefer?

I wrote a comment in response to the article and out of the many replies to the comment, most were directed at the commenter.

I could have been as rude as one who comments here "Hey nobody asked you to join in the conversation so butt out."

Besides, as you noted the other day, what kind of site would this be, if no one took the minority position? "I love you AA ....I love you too" " Aren't we the most wonderful people"

I did my first one recently and found there was not a lot of interest in talking about things the way I would like to talk about them. So be it.

You will not have the same experience if you put out what you think as honestly as you can. If you are not a troll, you can prove it overnight (or whatever unit of time works for you) by stating what you think is true and inviting the rest of us to comment.

I didn't find it to be unproductive. It was good for me to frame a topic the way I thought it should be framed. It didn't get a lot of replies because it wasn't controversial. I am sure any post you make will get lots of replies.

I don't pick a single topic with Rm - he'll argue about crazy little stuff like whether Come Together ripped off Chuck Berry. If it was just about avoiding a topic like slavery or black rights or something, but the dude just likes to argue for no reason.

Because if a gun-toting bad guy happens into a thread on flower arranging, what are you going to do, spray some pollen on the guy and hope he's allergic???

The thread-lings have to be prepared to defend themselves. No thread is safe unless its thread-lings are packing.

However, for this to work, the bad guy either has to know...or not know...that the thread-lings are carrying guns or could be carrying guns or normally carry guns, but not this time...I can't remember which.

Environmental adaptation means adapting, changing to new situations and new threats. That would mean not sticking with exactly the same thing that was an appropriate response to human society's environment of 200+ years ago, that would mean altering it according to new needs.

This kind of organized attack is frightening: People getting together and figuring out how much damage they can do before they are shut down. It is like a club made up of the single shooters who perform suicide by cop in our country.

[....] The far western region of Xinjiang is home to a simmering rebellion against Chinese rule by separatists among parts of the Muslim Uighur (pronounced WEE'-gur) population.

Most attacks blamed on Uighur separatists take place in Xinjiang, but Saturday's assault took place more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the southeast in Yunnan, which has not had a history of such unrest. However, a suicide car attack blamed on Uighur separatists that killed five people at Beijing's Tiananmen Gate last November raised alarms that militants may be aiming to strike at targets throughout the country [....]

I object to calling Uyghurs "separatist" in the same way I'd object to calling Tibetans "separatist"- Deng Xiao Peng invaded both areas in the 50's, and the Chinese have been doing their best to turn both into pure Han Chinese regions, completely overrunning local culture and moving in tons of Chinese immigrants, building high rises and wide boulevards to dominate the traditional architecture & city layouts, heavy growing of rice out in the desert to destroy the environment, etc.

I'm pretty skeptical of whatever the Chinese have to say about the matter - 60 years of abuse is bound to provoke some reaction.

Use of knife attacks by Uighur separatists is not a new thing, if that indeed is what they are dealing with here. Two previous examples are in this timeline offered by theSouth China Morning Post at the end of this report. There was also "wave of syringe stabbings" (government saying 500 victims!) and there have been bombings including suicide bombings, a hostage situation (weapon unknown) and even one case of "gunfights":

Chronology of key events related to the restive region since 2009:

2009

June 25 Two Uighur factory workers are reported killed and dozens injured in a huge brawl with Han Chinese in Shaoguan, in the southern province of Guangdong.

July 5 Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Uighurs riot in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi after security forces move in on a protest over the Shaoguan incident.

July 7 The government says nearly 200 people died in the unrest, with more than 1,600 injured and hundreds arrested. Eventually at least 26 are reportedly sentenced to death.

September 2 -- Han residents of Urumqi protest for days over a wave of syringe stabbings which the government eventually says had nearly 500 victims, blaming “ethnic separatist forces”.

July 31-August 1 Two attacks by alleged terrorists leave 13 people dead in a Han Chinese section of Kashgar, while police kill eight suspected Uighur separatists.

September 15 Courts in Xinjiang sentence to death four Uighurs over the July incidents.

December 28 Police in Pishan kill seven “terrorists” in a hostage standoff that left one officer dead. State media calls them terrorists engaged in a “holy war”.

2012

February 28Rioters armed with knives kill at least 10 people in Yecheng, while police shoot two of the attackers dead, state press say. One man is later sentenced to death.

2013

April 23Gunfights in Bachu leave 15 police and community workers and six “terrorists” dead. Two men are later sentenced to death.

June 26At least 35 people are killed when, according to Xinhua, “knife-wielding mobs” attack police stations and other sites in Lukqun before security personnel open fire. Three people are later sentenced to death.

August 20 A Chinese policeman is killed in what state media call an “anti-terrorism” operation in Yilkiqi. Overseas media report 22 Uighurs were shot dead.

October 28 Three members of the same Xinjiang family crash their car into tourists in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the symbolic heart of the Chinese state, killing two, before setting it on fire and dying themselves, according to authorities who call it a terrorist attack.

November 17 Two policemen and nine attackers are killed at a police station in Serikbuya, state media say. Rights groups say the trigger was the fatal shooting of a Uighur youth during a protest.

December 16 14 Uighurs and two police officers are killed in Shufu county. Authorities describe the slain Uighurs as members of an extremist group, but campaigners say police raided a house where a family was preparing for a wedding, with six women among those killed.

December 30 An assault on a police station in Yarkand leaves eight attackers dead, according to the Xinjiang government’s official website.

2014

January 15 A prominent Uighur academic and critic of government policy, economics lecturer Ilham Tohti, is detained by police, his wife says, and later charged with separatism, which can carry the death penalty.

January 25 A total of 12 people have been killed in Xinhe, six in explosions and six shot dead by police dealing with “violent incidents”, a government-run news portal says.

February 14 A total of 11 people die in an attack on police in Wushi, with officers shooting eight dead and three blowing themselves up, authorities say.

March 1 At least 29 people are killed and more than 130 wounded by knife-wielding assailants at Kunming train station in Yunnan province, more than 1,600 kilometres from Xinjiang. Officials blame separatist terrorists from Xinjiang.

If China had The First Freedom and every Chinese had a no-background-check access to AK-47s, with a big magazines, these guys wouldn't have to stab 50 people, they could have mowed them down wholesale with a fusillade of bullets.

That's the question we must ask when confronted with terrorism. At what point does it become justifiable to purposely, by design and as the immediate objective, kill civilians in public places to achieve political goals?

To answer both OC & NCD, I dunno - including Idunno if the Chinese accusation of Uyghr complicity is correct. There are a couple of questions, maybe more - is it moral? is it effective (whether for PR or actual outcome)? I'm reluctant to pre-emptively dismiss all civilian terrorism, in part because the powers that be will continue to use it whether the relatively powerless unilaterally "disarm" - literally in the case of Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

The Russians managed to brutally overrun Chechnya twice, and what were fairly restrained Chechnyan attempts to publicize their cause - hijacking a Russian boat on the Black Sea and taking a theater in Moscow - turned out very differently because who handled the crisis - Russians (who gassed its own people in the theater & killed a number of hostages early on in the hijacking) vs. Turks (who negotiated a bloodless end to the boat crisis).

If the Palestinians shoot rockets towards Israelis, the world seems to notice - if they don't, the world seems to think all's well.

In the case of Xinjiang, the region was supposed to be a Uyghur zone as negotiated after occupation (and the given name "Uyghur Autonomous Zone" - instead, of course, Han Chinese resettlement is used as a "facts on the ground" method to make sure Xinjiang is Han-ified as much as feasible (many of the areas Chinese don't want to live, but in a cooler, less arid city like Urumuqi, achieving 80%+ Mandarin speaking shows the success of the government's strategy and the futility of the native population's plight.

Below you can see Lhasa's new look - hardly Tibetan - as the Chinese brag about their expensive "world's highest railroad" and reshuffling the city to once again use their vast overpopulation as a weapon. (That Mao used massive over-breeding as a weapon to get China noticed after he took over in 1949 shouldn't be missed, and of course his mass atrocities on civilians in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are part of the background of modern China, along with Chiang Kai-Shek's busting a dam to kill 800,000+ in a probably useless measure to slow down the Japanese.

So what exactly are the original Turkic inhabitants of Xinjiang/East Turkestan supposed to do to maintain some voice, some power? Yeah, I'd see it more relevant even to attack civilians in their own district, but then, people just say "Wild Wild West" and forget about it. On the other hand, here's a grossly violent act - still disappeared from CCTV - that may get the perpetrators noticed, but hard to say there's anything positive that can or should come from the attention - I can't get behind mass slashings as a means to whatever end. Still, what are the Chinese expecting - that people should accept being driven into oblivion, like the steady expansion of the Gobi & Taklamakan?

If everyone in a society had access to AK 47's with big magazines, it would be most likely that terrorists would use IED's or suicide bombers. Like both insurgents and terrorists have already figured out to do with in various places with occupying soldiers, where all the soldiers have access to AK 47's and big magazines.

Actually, I am interested in this knife thing thinking along these lines: is this a cultural thing with them? Is there a special fear significance or power significance for them or even the targets? Because as the timeline I have posted shows, they have access to and have tried other methods.

One unfortunate thing in this case is that it's unlikely anyone is going to get any straight talk about what is really going on with all of this from the Chinese government. Unless they really get serious about honestly participating in international terrorism prevention to the detriment of their "we've got everything under control" national message control priorities.

Hu Xijin, editor of the influential Global Times newspaper, published by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily, wrote on his Weibo feed that the government should say who it suspected of the attack as soon as possible.

"If it was Xinjiang separatists, it needs to be announced promptly, as hearsay should not be allowed to fill the vacuum," Hu wrote.

Which at first thought was encouraging in that regard, but then on re-reading, the "needs to be announced promptly" suggested to me that they might just make stuff up for public consumption rather than give the the real facts. And as a matter of fact, their whole system might just encourage investigators and other law enforcement to make stuff up to please their higher ups.

Account of the building of the narrative so far, including examples of social media items that were censored/deleted, and blasting of certain western media coverage by the official Chinese media (don't be fooled by the title, the article really is about the government narrative):

So you are suggesting that lead poisoning caused a group of Kunming area people to get dressed in matching clothes and attack other Kunming area people with knives at their train station? They could be crazed meth addicts or glue sniffers, too, though not crazed badly enough to get dressed all alike before heading out. Or they could be also be angry about the thousands of other environmental poisonings going on in China each and every day on its citizens everywhere, why would it be just be the effects of lead specifically?

I don't know AA but it is a possibility. How young were the attackers? Was was their generation exposed to lead more than any other any time?

If you were of the minority group, forced to live in a hostile environment, with contaminates known to injure others and all your complaints to authorities were ignored, (maybe because of corruption), what would you do? I am not saying it is a fact, but would we ever know the truth, other than terrorists attacked. I guess the term terrorist is in the eyes of the beholder.

When its their kids dying because of greed, maybe they view the authorities and the businesses that benefit financially as terrorists. Who use toxic waste to kill of the weak, minority.

What would we do if we didn't have the EPA and the major polluters ignored us ? DIE?

It's too bad that I petered out (sorry, but that's the expression...) because just before the bushmaster, the nickname for that monster six shooter is "the raging judge" which would have fit so well into the talmudic theme..oh, well.

Wrong .... A Self Defense alternative, rather than death by mad men with machetes, hacking and stabbing, our weakest amongst us, who cant escape. Maybe one of our parents or grandparents? Are we just supposed to stand there; helplessly looking on?

Accept it as Wrong place, wrong time? If it's meant to be, accept it?

What would you recommend people do, especially the elderly, if they are attacked by gangs wielding machetes? We should learn something from this atrocity, in order to save lives, shouldn't we?

Dioscorides, a Greek physician who lived in the 1st century CE, wrote that lead makes the mind "give way".[38][156]

Children with lead poisoning may thus have adverse health, cognitive, and behavioral effects that follow them into adulthood.[46]

The painter Caravaggio might have died of lead poisoning. ,,,[166] Paints used at the time contained high amounts of lead salts.Caravaggio is known to have indulged in violent behavior, as caused by lead poisoning

Note he is reporting from Kunming ( & also that he presents the government's narrative as wanting to promote the idea that ethnic groups are living in harmony, by downplaying the Uighur I.D., but playing up that these were "terrorists" ):

KUNMING, China — Even with the objects of his ire in earshot, the landlord barely lowered his voice to describe his Uighur neighbors, who also happened to be his tenants.

“During the day they look like human beings, but at night they are thieves and thugs,” he said as a group of elderly women in traditional head scarves drank tea in the courtyard of his building. “Even the police are afraid of them. We all hate them, but there’s nothing to be done about it.”

It is fair to say that relations have never been easy between the ethnic Han who dominate this vast nation and the Uighur minority whose traditional homeland is in China’s far western borderlands. But in the two days since a group of assailants rampaged through the Kunming Railway Station here in southwestern China, killing at least 29 people and wounding 143, the official narrative of a kaleidoscope of ethnic groups living in harmony is being tested by the news that the killers were from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region [.....]

Violence as savage and public as the massacre that took place at a Chinese train station on Saturday shocks the chemistry of a country in a way that years of more remote, simmering conflict do not. Acts of such spectacular violence exert unpredictable forces on the public and on the leaders who are charged with protecting it, transforming judgments of when and how to use force and decisions about what can be sacrificed in the name of security, as well as the definitions of citizenship, patriotism, and innocence. Rarely do they leave anyone better off than they were before.

When eight assailants armed with foot-long sabers set upon men and women in the southwestern city of Kunming, killing at least twenty-nine people and injuring a hundred and forty-three, they struck in a place and a manner that nobody in China had anticipated. For all its epic history of bloodshed, the People’s Republic is unaccustomed to this kind of threat against citizens going about their daily lives, and, by day’s end, the attack was seared into public consciousness in a way that, since 9/11, has become customary for these moments around the world: it is the 3/1 incident. A message in wide circulation declared, “We are all Kunmingers.”

We will probably not be able to get the real "iconography" here for quite a long time because of the government's need to control the narrative. Though I think the Chinese powers-that-be would be wise to be explaining such things honestly in international anti-terror meets, even if still trying to spin another public narrative, I suspect their pride will not allow them.

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I have no idea or particular opinion about whether Garrison Keillor is guilty of anything, though it's always struck me as odd. But this somewhat but not quite illuminating article gums up the works a bit when taken as a part of a whole. The whole, of course, being accusations flying hither and yon with little if any explanation - even when they could stand some.

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On the hamster wheel of continual work, production and consumption, and Hebert Marcuse's.dreams.

[....] Marcuse did not live to see the 1980s, however [....] But his ideas lived on. In a 2004 essay for Harper’s magazine, for example, novelist and essayist Mark Slouka took to task the U.S. obsession with work [....]

One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair.....American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, had paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for exclusive rights to McDougal’s story ...David Pecker, AMI CEO, describes the President as “a personal friend... he never printed a word about Trump without his approval.”

Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Was Trump diminishing the significance of the word treason, projecting onto the opposition (as he so often does) his own transgressions, by accusing Democrats of treason for not applauding him at the SOU?

Talking heads don't appear to have had much time to look at the details yet. Reporters are waiting on the formal announcement from Rod Rosenstein of the indictments. It is clear that they are directly related to Putin, not clear yet whether to the Trump administration.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment Friday against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities accused of violating US laws to interfere with US elections and political processes [....]

[....] in a blow to President Donald Trump, the GOP plan to enshrine his four-part immigration framework came the furthest of any proposal from reaching the 60-vote margin needed for passage, failing by 39-60. A competing bipartisan agreement got rejected, 54-45, after a furious White House campaign to defeat it, including a Thursday veto threat.

WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, who served as President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller over multiple days this week, NBC News has learned from two sources familiar with the proceedings.

When a transgender woman told doctors at a hospital in New York that she wanted to breast-feed her pregnant partner’s baby, they put her on a regimen of drugs that included an anti-nausea medication licensed in Britain and Canada but banned in the United States.

Within a month, according to the journal Transgender Health, the woman, 30, who was born male, was producing droplets of milk. Within three months — two weeks before the baby’s due date — she had increased her production to eight ounces of milk a day [....]

President Trump endorsed a 25-cent gas tax hike to pay for infrastructure at a White House meeting this morning with senior administration officials and members of Congress from both parties, according to two sources with direct knowledge. Trump also said he was open to other ways to pay for infrastructure, according to a source with direct knowledge.